


The Engine Of Survival

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds, Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-10
Updated: 2010-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:04:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written in a version of <a href="http://bessemerprocess.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://bessemerprocess.dreamwidth.org/"><b>bessemerprocess</b></a> and <a href="http://sarken.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://sarken.dreamwidth.org/"><b>sarken</b></a>'s Angst Verse that took a turn left.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Engine Of Survival

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a version of [](http://bessemerprocess.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**bessemerprocess**](http://bessemerprocess.dreamwidth.org/) and [](http://sarken.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sarken**](http://sarken.dreamwidth.org/)'s Angst Verse that took a turn left.

When Keith wants to go out and kill (which is more often, lately) he'll start things, because if he's going to be away from Rachel he wants to make sure she's happy he is. So it's being a little too belligerent, a little too sulky maybe. She's starting to catch on, which is not so good but afterwards, it's all still so good (after the afterwards though, when they try to wash all the blood off it can be hard. It hits you a little too much just what this is and Keith can see it written across both their faces 'maybe we should stop, maybe we should end this').

The words are never spoken. They just get out of the shower and get back to it. After changing the sheets, usually. If it's been a particularly bad night, they don't even bother with that and Keith? He'd call this penance but really, he finds it (the pain, the way Rachel knows him, knows his body so well, the competition between them) so hot he might start to wonder if this wasn't a reward. If he hadn't known that this is killing both of them too, even as it's the best thing he's known.

He wonders about her. You don't safe-word because that's not taking care of Rachel, not getting her off. And it's not punishment, it's a mood killer and damn if Keith doesn't want this like burning. Not more than killing, because the punishment is part of the killing, part of the penance and the pleasure. Then sometimes of course, he'll come home still somewhere between angry and righteous.

-

What he actually has to do is convince them that this? It's all his fault. Even if Keith is more than a bit certain that Rachel is doing the same thing in an interview room just over. Though the BAU aren't the crime fighting team he was expecting.

"What Agent Reid? Am I irritating you because I'm making a quick confession or because of what I said to handsome over there"

On reflection, that may not have been the brightest thing to say except where it was. Because Keith wants them angry at him. Except the look the pipe cleaner with eyes shot him kind of gave him chills, in a way he'd never been expecting and he wonders if he'd ever looked like that, when someone else did something to Rachel, then dismisses it. His look and Agent Reid's are of a very different kind. He's killed but Agent Pipe-Cleaner has been on the other end of the knife or something like.

It's a sense you learn, when you've stabbed someone or at least that's who Keith begins to think of it. Some kind of intuition, except he'd never seen an FBI agent bristle like he'd just flirted with the Agent's Mom when it was the guys freaking boss. Three words, he thinks (when he thinks about this, afterwards) and the first two are what the. A commonly used phrase in the American cultural lexicon. Normal. He and Rachel had used that, before they lost the need for such words and phrasings.

And it's back to the cell again, in which Keith goes back to the beginning that is half-way through the story because he's not exact on when the hell it began any more.

But the first time he killed, he nearly didn't tell her and he wasn't sure if that was punishment enough because he was keeping secrets from Rachel or because maybe, just maybe he was depriving himself of a way she could use it. He still hasn't worked that one out, though he did tell her. In the middle of the bed - she's straddling him and her hands are firmly on him, fingernails digging through cuts and the pain is good, but he wants more. So that's when he tells her, in that tangle of bed covers, blood and skin.

"I've got someone else's blood on me Rach. Yeah, that's right, someone else's blood because I gave them their bruises. Doesn't that make you angry Rachel? Doesn't it make you want to hurt, when you think about what I did, what I did without you. I killed."

She might have hissed 'you bad girl, Keith. You bad, bad girl" as she pulls out the riding crop and the final assumption about whether or not you can feel both guilty, triumphant, aroused as hell and despairing all at once is answered in the way he hears them both gasping and afterwards, afterwards he holds Rachel still and gets her Kleenex, while she gets antiseptic. They've gotten very good at this.

He'd held Rachel, she'd curled in to him. He made sure she was pressing in to the bruises and she finds herself making sure too.

-

Rachel might just be tapping her feet. She's thinking about Keith, of course she fucking is. And how he'll want to take care of this but damn, is it too much to ask that they get to talk to each other. The last time she saw Keith he was on the bed, their bed. The sheets were just the right kind of sheets for them. Easy to wash too, not that they washed them much. Rachel looks down at her shoes, the sneakers they took the laces out of.

It's not like she's going to kill herself or anything. That isn't what this is about. It never has been. She looks down at her sneakers again, then back up at the cell and there's a part of her that still wants to laugh because this isn't where they should be - being peered at by profilers and cops - they should be at some ridiculous bar with the others. Except of course, it can never be the same again because of Jon. And Keith and her, but because of Jon. He'd called them in and she's never going to forgive him. Not for calling them in, but because she's not there with Keith any more.

Even she can't remember the last time they joked. Or joked in a way that involved other people, involved the toss. You can't have the toss or sneakers, because normality upsets the rhythm of things. You can't discipline the Keith Olbermann who you used to toss too and mock about his taste in alcohol, who introduced you to Anderson, Jon and Stephen and apologised for a week when he realised he'd actually hurt feelings because the Keith that was? He was a beautiful big brother.

Rachel started this for that Keith, but she's finishing it for all of Keith. For all he is now. For the way he made sure she chose the antiseptic that really stings.

They take care of each other. That's all this is.


End file.
